That ‘merry wanderer of the night’
Goodfellow Robin (our sweet Puck)
lends his name to the pin-cushion
gall, the wind-brought bedeguar
born and bred on rosa arvinsis.
A mass of mossy filament
sticky-branched it turns to
green then pink as autumn
falls, wearing winter’s crimson
‘Fore it dons a reddish-brown.
Inside ‘til spring
this tissued home with food
becomes a womb for
wasps upon the stem,
upon the branch, upon the tree.
How beguilingly
these wood-land growths
are so confined: beneath
the gentle rose - sub rosa
parthenogenesis divine